Change and Transformation

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.

I'm in favor of progress; it's change I don't like .

Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.

Progressive improvement beats delayed perfection.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

You can't break a bad habit by throwing it out the window. You've got to walk it slowly down the stairs.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.

Gradually the healing took place, seeming as it always does that it wasn't taking place.

When you know that illusion and transformation are no different from birth and death, then you may learn magic

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

Develop flexibility and you will be firm; cultivate yielding and you will be strong.

Once you transcend the external differences, anything can be merged with anything.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes. . . .But when the mind becomes conscious, when the rate of evolution speeds up, then you have to be careful. Careful of the world. You must learn the way. You must learn the skills, the art, the limits. A conscious mind must be part of the whole, intentionally and carefully--as the rock is part of the whole unconsciously. Do you see? Does it mean anything to you?

Division and differentiation are the processes by which things are created. Since things are emerging and dissolving all the time, you cannot specify the point when this division will stop.

To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return

If a branch is too rigid, it will break. Resist, and you will perish. Know how to yield, and you will survive.

This implies that the art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one's actions may use them and not fight them.

To Taoism that which is absolutely still or absolutely perfect is absolutely dead, for without the possibility of growth and change there can be no Tao. In reality there is nothing in the universe which is completely perfect or completely still; it is only in the minds of men that such concepts exist.

The limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another.

One shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. This will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another.